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Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

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Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#41

Post by tzs »

mcherm wrote: post #24

Dear Internet Archive: Not only do I support the measure you have taken and feel that it falls within the bounds of pro-social fair use, but I applaud the measures you have taken that are so important in this extreme time. Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, n…

> Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, not just during a national emergency.

Would there be any limits to your proposed exception? Or could they buy a single copy of a book and lend out as many simultaneous copies as readers asked for?

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#42

Post by nostromo »

mcherm wrote: post #24

Dear Internet Archive: Not only do I support the measure you have taken and feel that it falls within the bounds of pro-social fair use, but I applaud the measures you have taken that are so important in this extreme time. Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, n…

Declaring this "pro-social" doesn't suddenly make it legal. It's clearly not any more legal then lending out a single copy of a DVD to one million people via BitTorrent.

I get that it seems generous to give away these works. But they simply weren't theirs to give away to begin with. If you want to lend out 1,000 copies of book, first you have to buy 1,000 copies of said book.

I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. They're opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, and I'd hate to see their mission derailed because of it.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#43

Post by ooobit »

fenwick67 wrote: post #19
jfengel wrote: post #7

So under ordinary circumstances, when they do their Controlled Digital Lending, for each copy they lend out there's an actual dead-tree book sitting on a shelf somewhere?

Fun fact, there is a service called Console Classix that does this with classic game ROMs (NES, SNES etc). The cartridges sit around on shelves, then if you play a game they basically reserve that copy for you, which they say clears them of any copyright issues. It sounds sketchy but they've been in business renting ROMs for over 10 years and they're still around.

So, they're renting games that aren't widely available for purchase anymore? At what point do we sit back and agree that it makes no sense to extend protections to IP that isn't being sold anymore? Forgive my possible naivety here, but we grant patents/copyrights/trademarks to mitigate opportunity costs in markets, not to stop someone else from taking credit for an idea. So, if there's no continuous market, the risk of lost capital would be immaterial to the IP holder's interests, right?

I might sound radical here, so feedback is welcome. But this reads to me like anti-free-market: Invent a product, sell product with protections to limit theft of the idea, market evolves and the product and derivatives stop being profitable, no active market for product but protections continue... There's a logic break in the logistics there.

Maybe some protections allow them to transform the original product for a current market, but if that does nothing about the market for the original product, unauthorized distribution is immaterial to the holder. They can't lose revenue on a product they weren't exercising due diligence to earn revenue on at that time.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#44

Post by geofft »

ddevault wrote: post #13
btilly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.

That is obscene . Screw copyright.

I agree that it's ridiculous.

I'm not sure how to get from there to "screw copyright." Yes, it's weird that the law requires (at least under normal circumstances, and if the Internet Archive is wrong, also today) physical copies of books as essentially "reserves" for scanned versions of books. I don't think that it follows that it's weird that the law requires that you have to pay per copy.

In the pre-digital world, if a library wanted to lend out ten copies of a book, they'd have to pay for ten copies, and that wasn't weird. And this isn't an argument about zero-marginal-cost products, because a good chunk of the money the library spent would not go to the physical cost of book printing. (In fact most people's intuitions would say it's fairer that there's a profit beyond the marginal cost, because that way the author and editor get compensated more for more successful books.)

Yes, it'd be significantly better if the Internet Archive needed to have one physical copy (or even zero). I don't think it's weird that if they or any other library wants to lend out ten copies, they have to buy ten copies.

(I'm sympathetic to arguments of the form "information wants to be free," but, well, people want to eat, too. If injustice A is mitigated by injustice B, snapping your fingers and getting rid of B without having a plan to deal for A isn't a just action. Whether or not authors should depend on copyright for their livelihood, many of them do. And yes, several don't - so in particular, I'm much more sympathetic to the Internet Archive's action when it comes to textbooks, journals, etc. written by people who have a primary livelihood other than book-writing, such as college faculty, and much less sympathetic when it comes to books written by people who's job title is "author.")

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#46

Post by geofft »

nostromo wrote: post #42
mcherm wrote: post #24

Dear Internet Archive: Not only do I support the measure you have taken and feel that it falls within the bounds of pro-social fair use, but I applaud the measures you have taken that are so important in this extreme time. Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, n…

Declaring this "pro-social" doesn't suddenly make it legal. It's clearly not any more legal then lending out a single copy of a DVD to one million people via BitTorrent. I get that it seems generous to give away these works. But they simply weren't theirs to give away to begin with. If you want to lend out 1,000 copies of book, first you have to buy 1,000 copies of said book. I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. T…

> I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. They're opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, and I'd hate to see their mission derailed because of it.

Not only that - if this goes to court, there's a really good chance that the concept of Controlled Digital Lending (i.e., libraries lending out scans backed one-to-one by physical books, which many libraries including Internet Archive have been doing for a long time before this) ends up in court too, and a judge says, what the Internet Archive did is illegal because the whole idea of Controlled Digital Lending was never legal in the first place.

I think it's foolish to trust that the courts (especially the courts today) are going to be sympathetic to fair use and to narrowing copyright.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#47

Post by ddevault »

geofft wrote: post #44
ddevault wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is obscene . Screw copyright.

I agree that it's ridiculous. I'm not sure how to get from there to "screw copyright." Yes, it's weird that the law requires (at least under normal circumstances, and if the Internet Archive is wrong, also today) physical copies of books as essentially "reserves" for scanned versions of books. I don't think that it follows that it's weird that the law requires that you have to pay per copy. In the pre-digital world,…

Copying a digital book incurs no material cost. You could charge for the bandwidth to download it from you, or you could charge for paper books, but it's ridiculous to me that you should be able to charge someone else for copying data from their hard drive to my hard drive. People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience. Alternatively, you could simply ask your audience to support you financially, which is how I make a substantial amount of my own income.

Digital books are not paper books. They are fundamentally different things. Paper books are scarce, digital books are not. Information is not scarce.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#48

Post by Apocryphon »

geofft wrote: post #46
nostromo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declaring this "pro-social" doesn't suddenly make it legal. It's clearly not any more legal then lending out a single copy of a DVD to one million people via BitTorrent. I get that it seems generous to give away these works. But they simply weren't theirs to give away to begin with. If you want to lend out 1,000 copies of book, first you have to buy 1,000 copies of said book. I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. T…

> I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. They're opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, and I'd hate to see their mission derailed because of it. Not only that - if this goes to court, there's a really good chance that the concept of Controlled Digital Lending (i.e., libraries lending out scans backed one-to-one by physical books, which many libraries including Internet Archive have been doing for a long time befo…

There's a theory that IA leadership is intentionally trying to force a landmark court case:

https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1244257620548038656

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#49

Post by geofft »

ddevault wrote: post #47
geofft wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ridiculous. I'm not sure how to get from there to "screw copyright." Yes, it's weird that the law requires (at least under normal circumstances, and if the Internet Archive is wrong, also today) physical copies of books as essentially "reserves" for scanned versions of books. I don't think that it follows that it's weird that the law requires that you have to pay per copy. In the pre-digital world,…

Copying a digital book incurs no material cost. You could charge for the bandwidth to download it from you, or you could charge for paper books, but it's ridiculous to me that you should be able to charge someone else for copying data from their hard drive to my hard drive. People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be stake…

Again - if that argument holds up, why is it reasonable to sell paper books for significantly more than the cost of reproduction? What's magical about the $0 price point? If it costs $5 to print a physical copy and you're okay with stores selling copies for $25, why is it a problem for stores to sell e-books for $20?

In the pre-e-book world, libraries could always copy books on their own. They could say, we're buying one copy of this book at $25, and then we'll print another thousand copies ourselves at $5 each and sell them to other libraries. Quality might have been lower, but it would have gotten books into the hands of more people, right? Why didn't they?

> People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience.

I don't disagree. But that's not the world we live in. Food shouldn't be staked on that, but it is. Let's solve that first, and then we can start taking people's livelihoods away.

This is kind of like saying "Tipping is an unjust and evil and stupid system, so I'm not going to tip." Yes, it is an unjust and evil and stupid system - but the practical effect of not tipping is nothing more than underpaying people who, for better or worse, rely on that unjust and evil and stupid system. Fix the system first (e.g., petition your favorite restaurant to raise prices and have a no-tipping policy, and patronize those that have already done that), then you can stop tipping without hurting people

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#50

Post by geofft »

Apocryphon wrote: post #48
geofft wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm disappointed with Internet Archive. They're opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, and I'd hate to see their mission derailed because of it. Not only that - if this goes to court, there's a really good chance that the concept of Controlled Digital Lending (i.e., libraries lending out scans backed one-to-one by physical books, which many libraries including Internet Archive have been doing for a long time befo…

There's a theory that IA leadership is intentionally trying to force a landmark court case: https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1244257620548038656

Hope it goes better than Eldred v. Ashcroft.
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